Sanderxpander

Mantofini

Sanderxpander
I would call them pretty good but not excellent. Probably wouldn't buy it just as a generic controller but then, I really like the sounds and workflow.

Out of curiosity Sanderxpander. What other pad controllers would you recommend? I have read bad things about the responsiveness of Akai pads. There is a Novation controller than I might try next. The KORG padKontrol sounds good, as well, but, none of the stores in my area that allow returns currently carry it. Also, I'm not sure that will continue to be supported for a while.

That's a really good question, and one I can't answer confidently right away. I hear the pads on the Mk2 are a little better and I don't really dislike mine as such but I recognize the problem of missing notes when plaing softly. I've played a Pad Kontrol and liked the feel, but haven't really put it through its paces enough to comment with confidence. I haven't tried the Novation but it seems decent. Didn't like the Akai.

Thanks for the reply. Side note, you mentioned really liking the workflow. Would you, or anybody else for that matter, mind giving a little more feedback. How do you use it (i.e. VST/stand-alone/as a MIDI controller/all of the above)? What kind of stuff do you use it for (i.e. electronic/natural drums? instrument sounds? full compositions?)?

So nobody has reported it to NI I guess... Hmmmm....

Mantofini, I use it mostly for electronic or at least "programmed sounding" drums and almost always inside a DAW (Sonar and Ableton, in effect). I will occasionally get another instrument out of it but I really think that's its strongest point for my use.
Things I like about the workflow are
- browsing kits and kitpieces from the hardware, it's very easy to swap individual sounds in a kit or to build a new one
- adjusting pitch, volume, sample start and stop points, filter and adsr from the hardware
- recording loops inside the hardware, layering sounds/patterns and applying swing to kits or single kitpieces, this is very quick and as a result very inspirational even if you later want to export loops to work in a linear fashion
- I've not done it in a while but recording a loop in Maschine's sample recording and slicing it across the sixteen pads is great fun and again brings you places and ideas you might not otherwise have found.
- for jamming, just hooking it up to your laptop with some headphones (and using Asio4all), I found using just the Maschine software is fun too, though I haven't finished complete productions that way.

With all this, I found it very helpful to really learn the hardware well because it makes you feel it is a self contained instrument, which we all know gives you a very different feeling from clicking around in the DAW. It really helps that the hardware communicates directly with Maschine, no matter what else you may be doing in your DAW at the time.

Mantofini

mmorgan
Mantofini: It is a separate application that Maschine. Off the top of my head I think it is "Controller Editor"...I'll check when I get home and post here if no one posts a name.
 
Also one thing to consider with Maschine, even though you only want it for the pads, it comes with quite a bit of NI's typically high quality content. I find it a lot of fun to play around with but I'm far from expert in the sampling realm.
 
Regards,

Do you find you actually end up using the sounds from Mashine in your finished work or is it more for fun?
 
I agree that NI's content is typically high quality. That's almost part of the problem. I just bought Komplete 9. I've barely scratched the surface. To date, I've only used Guitar Rig, Studio Drummer and some of the Kontakt orchestral sounds. I haven't touched the synths yet and only played with Battery for about an hour, though I have a feeling a pad controller would make using that a little more fun.

When I first got Maschine I took one of the sample projects and used it inside of Sonar adding quite a bit of my own stuff to get to what I thought sounded like a decent song. It was really an exercise in learning the gear. This was a couple years ago. Up until about two months ago I have been using it almost entirely for the drum pads. By the way, the editor is called Controller Editor, I opened it up to my Battery kit and saw I had 3 pages for pads and 2 pages for rotaries but Mikro has no rotaries (which is why I'm probably going to upgrade to full Maschine for Christmas). The past couple months I've been playing with it (literally and figuratively) to see if I can get to a point where I can use it for more than just the pads.
 
I've got K9 also and it fits incredibly well inside of Maschine...really like Session Drummer in their but all of the Abbey Road kits get a workout too.
 
If you have a big box local music store I'd try and get them to set it up for you so you can try out the pads for sensitivity.
 
Regards,

Hey Alex, congrats on the new toys!! Please keep us up to date on the new adventures you are having. I own neither of them but seen reviews, scratched my head and wondered how I would employ it myself.... BUT... have a "weird need"...
 
1) I convinced a drummer friend to get a Roland TD-9 with the extra tom, and LOVE being able to tailor drum sounds quickly... but this is hardware driven, and I do not own the kit!
2) I get impatient trying to tweak AD the same way, and by the time I do, I forget what I was doing!
3) I fall back on SD3 to tailor sounds in an extremely "odd" way... I will grab a mic and do a "Michael Winslow" and build the kit sounds and drag them into SD3...
 
This is "fine" for throwing ideas into X3, but makes making a "final product" a complete nightmare :( so would love to hear how you are enjoying the new toys

Mike and Sanderxpander,
 
Thanks for the feedback. You guys have been quite helpful. I actually watched some videos of somebody working in the Maschine software last night. It looked like fun though not something I would likely do on a regular basis. 
 
Mike, I skimmed through the manual on the Controller Editor last night. Thanks for the reference. I was actually impressed with what I saw. Usually programs of that nature aren't intuitive at all. I had one that came with my M-Audio Axiom 49 that I found a little confusing to say the least. Similarly with the KORG editing software that came with the nanoPAD2. The ability to switch between templates and pad pages on the fly seems very useful and far quicker than what I have seen on the internet for the KORG padKontrol.
 
Once again, thanks guys.

.

Maschine 2.0.5 just came out about 6 hours ago, anybody tested it fully yet?
Can't see much difference, the plugins still doesn't show MIDI notes in Sonar for instance.

I was going to post a thread entitled Please give some love to Sonar in the Native Instruments maschine forums as you can bet the NI QA dept will be scanning the threads for issues with 2.0.5 right now, however I am still awaiting approval to post from administrators (clearly my reputation proceeds me  ).

What's New?

• Added language versions for Maschine documentation.
• Improved Memory consumption.
• Fixed issue with MIDI events from Ableton Live 9 triggering events twice.
• Fixed issue with parameter settings when recalling Maschine sessions inside ProTools.
• Possible to load all projects with referenced read-only files.
• Setting a loop range via Scene screen now working correctly on Maschine MK1 controllers.
• Overall performance and stability improvements.
• Bug fixes in several areas.

 
Since i experienced no bugs here with my studio black , don't know if i take the risk ....

And this could mean absolutely anything....  (hate it when software companies don't go into specifics).


* Overall performance and stability improvements.
* Bug fixes in several areas.
 
I haven't tried it but I suspect rollback is possible if you are worried about it, if you are running version 2 it's a no brainer.
2.0.5 behaves no different to the previous version IMHO, but then I haven't really used this thing properly yet (training myself slowly).